Category: RKBA

Rights Protected by the Second Amendment are Being Restored, NOT Created

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)-— The jurisprudence of the Second Amendment is: it was ratified to protect the existing right of the people to keep and bear arms. It did not create new rights. One reason to protect the right was to enable the creation of militias from the armed population.

It was well understood, at the time of ratification, the right to keep and bear arms included the right to do so for self-defense as well as community defense, for hunting, and included the ancillary rights to practice, buy, sell and make weapons, as well as ammunition and accessories for them. These rights were not disputed and were considered to be derived from the natural rights to life and liberty. From Heller:

1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. Pp. 2–53.

The American Second Amendment was recognized as needed because the English right to arms had been construed too narrowly to protect the colonists against the exercise of power by King George and the British Empire. The Americans had recently fought a long and bitter war sparked by the British attempts at disarming the American colonists.  The initial battles of Lexington and Concord were direct attempts by the representatives of the British Crown to confiscate gunpowder and, particularly, cannon.  Cannon were crew served weapons. The officers of the Crown confiscated plenty of individual weapons as well.

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Missouri AG prioritizing Biden social media collusion lawsuit, defending Second Amendment law

(The Center Square) – A lawsuit against President Joe Biden’s administration for alleged collusion with social media companies and defending Missouri’s Second Amendment Preservation Act are priorities for Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey.

Litigation in both cases began while Republican U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt was serving as Missouri’s attorney general. After the State of the State address on Wednesday, Bailey, who was appointed in November to replace Schmitt, said depositions in the social media collusion case are leading toward an injunction.

“We have documentary evidence, we have testimonial evidence and we intend to seek more evidence in the coming weeks,” Bailey said in an interview with The Center Square. “We’re on an expedited discovery timeline. At some point, we’re going to get into a procedural posture where we’re going to ask for an injunction to prevent further coercion and collusion from the federal government and prevent Biden and his team from censoring speech.”

Missouri v. Biden was filed by Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry in May and they were granted a motion for discovery to expedite a possible preliminary injunction in July. In addition to releasing documents in the case, they released the transcript of a deposition of Dr. Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical advisor who recently retired.

Last week, Bailey released emails from White House Digital Director Robert Flaherty and other associates to major social media platforms. It included an email from Flaherty to Facebook asking why a video by Tucker Carlson on COVID-19 vaccines didn’t violate the social media platform’s standards.

“What we’ve demonstrated and what we believe is going on is censorship because it’s unelected federal bureaucrats targeting specific speech that they disfavor and asking that it be removed from big-tech social media platforms,” Bailey said. “That’s the problem. It stifles free, fair and open debate and it undermines our First Amendment. There should be marketplace of ideas that is free from government censorship.”

Bailey said defending the Missouri’s Second Amendment Preservation Act in lawsuits also will be a priority. The city of Arnold filed a lawsuit and St. Louis city and county and Jackson County filed a separate suit seeking to overturn the law. Both lawsuits claim the law restricts local police cooperating with federal law enforcement on gun violations.

“The Second Amendment is what makes all of the other (amendments) possible,” Bailey said. “It prevents enforcement of federal firearm regulations that exceed or violate the Second Amendment. We need to be going after criminals and not guns, first and foremost. I think most law enforcement officers in the state of Missouri agree with that. If we spent more time going after the criminals and not the guns, we will have safer streets.”

Bailey said the Missouri law is aligned with the principles of the authors of the U.S. Constitution.

“The founders understood that, number one, our rights come from God and not men,” Bailey said. “The federal constitution was a floor, not a ceiling, and the states could be guarantors of individual liberties. So the state legislature wants to expand upon the foundational rights codified in the Second Amendment and they have authority to do that. It’s about federalism and individual liberty.”

Analysis: Illinois Sheriffs’ Resistance to AR-15 Ban Latest Frontier for Second Amendment Sanctuary Movement

In the state often credited with kicking off the nationwide movement, so-called Second Amendment Sanctuaries are being put to their most significant test yet.

Shortly after Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (D.) signed a bill banning “assault weapons” and certain ammunition magazines into law last week. Illinois gun owners have 300 days to register or otherwise dispose of the thousands of different models of guns affected by the ban. If they don’t, they could face serious criminal charges.

However, the actions of local officials across the state are calling that possibility into question. Many have begun to mobilize in opposition to enforcing the law. Sheriffs and State’s Attorneys of more than 80 Illinois counties have released statements decrying the law as “unconstitutional.” Most have publicly declared that they refuse to enforce it against otherwise law-abiding citizens.

“Until further direction from our courts, the Effingham County Sheriff’s Office will not expend the resources of Effingham County to ensure law-abiding gun owners are registering their firearms with the State, or arresting, otherwise law-abiding individuals, solely for their non-compliance with HB5471,” Effingham County Sheriff Paul Kuhns said in a public release.

“My office will exercise strict prosecutorial discretion in circumstances relating to enforcement of House Bill 5471, ensuring that the clearly-defined Second Amendment rights of our citizens remain undiminished,” Effingham County State’s Attorney Aaron Jones added. “While my office remains committed to protecting the citizens of Effingham County by prosecuting violent crimes, I have no intention of turning otherwise law-abiding citizens into convicted felons solely due to non-compliance with House Bill 5471.”

The sentiment was echoed in jurisdictions around the state with model language provided by the Illinois Sheriffs Association. Nine in 10 of the state’s sheriffs have now publicly declared their intention to disregard the law, according to the Associated Press

The sheer number of prosecutors and sheriffs who have come out against enforcing the new ban represents a new high water mark for the Second Amendment Sanctuary movement. That’s fitting for a trend that has its roots in none other than Effingham County, Illinois.

Resistance to gun control from higher up in the government has existed in some form for decades. The successful challenge of the Brady Act’s initial requirement that local law enforcement use their resources to conduct background checks on gun buyers in 1997’s Printz v. U.S. is one early success in the power struggle. Beginning in the mid-2000s and through the early 2010s, a handful of deep red states and localities around the country even passed resolutions suggesting that they wouldn’t obey gun laws they viewed as unconstitutional–though they were often primarily symbolic measures that have never been put to a significant test.

Those earlier efforts began to crystalize into the modern sanctuary movement starting with Pritzker’s 2018 election. Effingham County officials, alarmed by his win and the possibility of an assault weapons ban, passed the first resolution credited with coining the term “sanctuary” as applied to the Second Amendment. The resolution, which quickly spread to 70 additional counties across Illinois and later other states like Virginia, was a simple declaration that local officials would view any of the gun-control laws then under consideration by the legislature as unconstitutional.

“We’re just stealing the language that sanctuary cities use,” Bryan Kibler, former Effingham County State’s Attorney, told the Associated Press in reference to the immigration “sanctuary” movement at the time.

“We wanted to get across that our Second Amendment rights are slowly being stripped away.”

Now, faced with a new set of gun-control measures, a similar dynamic is at play.

But unlike those previous resolutions, which predominately surfaced ad hoc wherever new gun-control measures were a possibility, the current crop of non-compliance declarations are being announced in response to a law that has passed. That creates a new paradigm testing the mettle of officials on both sides. Without local law enforcement support and few options to force their hand, backers of the ban are left without many options. The state’s gun owners could very well decide to disregard the registration requirement, and local law enforcement may well follow through on their promise not to bother them.

That has happened before.

Following the 2013 passage of the SAFE Act in New York, the refusal of some sheriffs to enforce its ban on certain guns and magazines coincided with widespread non-compliance. The most recent data suggests only about four percent of the guns required to be registered under the SAFE Act have actually been registered.

“It’s not that they aren’t aware of the law,” Paloma Capanna, a firearms lawyer who obtained the registration data,

told Hudson Valley One in 2019. “The lack of registration is a massive act of civil disobedience by gun owners statewide.”

Since ninety percent of Illinois’ sheriffs are vowing to look the other way on this latest ban, it’s hard to see how the results don’t end up looking similar in the Land of Lincoln.

Of course, it remains to be seen how resolved the Illinois sheriffs are in refusing to enforce the gun ban and corresponding registry requirement. The rapid groundswell of opposition has already provoked a backlash from many of the state’s top Democratic lawmakers, including Governor Pritzker.

He has repeatedly suggested that the defiant sheriffs are “violating their oaths of office” and has threatened to fire  those that refuse to enforce the ban. However, it does not appear that he has the power to remove duly-elected sheriffs from office under Illinois law.

Even if he can’t directly remove the local officials, Pritzker may hope to sway or replace them by other means. Or bypass them altogether.

“It’s our state police and law enforcement across the state that will, in fact, enforce this law, and these outlier sheriffs will comply or, frankly, they’ll have to answer to the voters,” Pritzker told NBC 5.

It’s possible the political pressure could wear some sheriffs down and cause them to reverse course. Or some might have misread what their constituents want and get an earful from residents clamoring to see a gun ban enforced. Pritzer could also prioritize using state police resources to try and enforce the ban on their own, though that would be a very tall order without local support.

If not, the rapid and organized adoption of non-enforcement policies across broad swaths of Illinois in response to a gun ban and registry requirement may become the biggest success story of the Second Amendment Sanctuary movement to date.

Federal Lawsuit Filed Against Unconstitutional Illinois Gun Ban

BELLEVUE, WA – -(AmmoLand.com)- The Second Amendment Foundation has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the recently-signed Illinois gun ban legislation, alleging it to be unconstitutional and asserting the state has criminalized “a common and important means of self-defense.” The case is known as Harrel v. Raoul.

Joining SAF in this legal action are the Illinois State Rifle Association, Firearms Policy Coalition, C4 Gun Store LLC, Marengo Guns, Inc. and a private citizen, Dane Harrel. Named as defendants are Attorney General Kwame Raoul, Illinois State Police Director Brendan F. Kelly, and other officials in their official capacities. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois.

“Illinois has banned the future sale, importation, purchase, delivery and manufacture of the most popular rifle in the United States, along with their standard capacity magazines,” noted SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “People who already own such firearms must now register their guns with the State Police. This ban violates the constitutional rights of Illinois gun owners, and we intend to prove it in court.

“Once again,” he continued, “Illinois lawmakers are scapegoating firearms and people who own them in a transparent attempt to convince people they are doing something about the horrible violence the state has suffered in recent years, especially in Chicago. In reality, it’s an effort to distract the public from the fact that these same lawmakers have been unable or unwilling to crack down on criminals responsible for violent crime.”

Modern semiautomatic firearms banned under the new Illinois law have been deliberately mischaracterized as “assault weapons” and even “weapons of war,” Gottlieb explained. He called this patently dishonest and deceitful.

“Anti-gun politicians tout this sort of legislation,” Gottlieb observed, “while they know it really won’t accomplish anything beyond creating the false public impression they are making the community safer. No neighborhood, no city, and no state ever became safer by restricting the rights of law-abiding citizens.”

 

Well, just to put it bluntly:

No, Second Amendment does protect AR-15s

I get that there are some people who don’t like AR-15s. They see these guns that look an awful lot like what our troops use and they get uncomfortable. They see people traipsing around the woods or our communities with them, often espousing what they think are extremist points of view, and it makes them even more uncomfortable.

So, they want AR-15s banned. After all, then no one could get such weapons and the extremists wouldn’t be as much of a threat anymore.

And every so often, someone thinks they’re clever enough to find a loophole, that the Second Amendment actually allows banning such firearms.

Gun advocates insist that the AR-15 is protected by the Second Amendment. This is not true – yet.

Neither the law nor the Second Amendment prevents Congress from banning such weapons. The obstacle is not just public opinion — polls show that far more people support such a ban than oppose it — but failure of political will before a powerful gun lobby and donors, a polarized Congress and a divided and fearful nation in thrall to the Cult of the Second Amendment.

Justice Clarence Thomas does not mention the AR-15 in his June 23 majority Supreme Court opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. This most expansive interpretation yet of the Second Amendment strikes down restrictions on the ability to carry guns outside the home in New York and five other states. The AR-15 also goes unmentioned in the bipartisan bill signed into law June 25 – the first major gun legislation in nearly 30 years.…

Gun advocates commonly cite District of Columbia v. Heller, the 2008 case authored by Justice Antonin Scalia. That opinion, which Thomas mentions frequently in Bruen, struck down the District’s banning possession of all handguns by non-law enforcement officials. That law required that owners of firearms of other kinds keep them unloaded, disassembled or locked when not located at a business place or while being used for lawful recreational activities.…

However, the Heller opinion, far from protecting a weapon like the AR-15, made clear that such a weapon could not only be regulated but banned once again. Heller specifically affirmed the National Firearms Act’s restrictions on machine guns and sawed-off shotguns, concluding that the Second Amendment does not protect “those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes such as short-barreled shotguns.”

Heller makes it clear that the Second Amendment, like most rights, is not unlimited and does not grant the right to keep and carry any weapon in any manner for whatever purpose.

But that right there is where the author screws up. See, he’s a lawyer, so he figures he knows the law. And I’m not, so he probably knows it far better than I do.

Where he makes his mistake, though, is in his lack of understanding about firearms in a far more general sense.

What he leaves out is that the Heller decision permitted the banning of guns not “in common use.” This is why machine guns could remain banned. I disagree with that interpretation by Justice Scalia and figure it was to make the ruling a bit more politically palatable, but my agreement or disagreement changes nothing.

Yet that phrase, “in common use,” matters with regard to the AR-15.

That gun is one of the most popular firearm models in the country. Millions of them are sold every year. An estimated 20 million of them are in circulation right now.

Maybe it’s just me, but that sure sounds like they’re in common use.

See, the author doesn’t like AR-15s, so he presents his interpretation. It misrepresents what Scalia actually wrote so badly that one can’t help but believe it’s intentional. Especially since the author is an attorney, someone who not just should understand what Scalia said but also knows how to twist things from a legal standpoint.

I’m sorry, but this is just a reinterpretation of the tired argument that, frankly, ignores a large part of the Second Amendment. You know, that whole “shall not be infringed” thing?

Sadly typical, unfortunately.

New Hampshire Bill Would Take on Federal Gun Control; Past, Present, and Future

CONCORD, N.H. (Jan. 15, 2023) – A bill introduced in the New Hampshire House would end state enforcement of a wide range of federal gun control measures; past, present and future. The passage of this bill would take an important step toward nullifying federal acts in practice and effect that infringe on the right to keep and bear arms within the state.

Rep. Tom Mannion (R) introduced House Bill 474 (HB474) on Jan. 11. Titled “Protection of Natural Right to Property and Self-defense,” the legislation would ban any entity or person, including any public officer or employee of the state and its political subdivisions, from enforcing any past, present or future federal acts, laws, executive orders, administrative orders, court orders, rules, regulations, statutes, or ordinances that infringe on the right to keep and bear arms.

The bill is similar to the Missouri Second Amendment Protection Act (SAPA) enacted in 2021.

Mannion said he was building on the momentum created by a bill passed last year that took a small step toward banning state and local enforcement of federal control. Mannion called that bill a “foot-in-the-door” and said he was “adding teeth to this law.”

DETAILS OF THE LEGISLATION

The bill includes a detailed definition of actions that qualify as “infringement,” including:

  • Any tax, levy, fee, or stamp imposed on firearms, firearm accessories, or ammunition not common to all other goods and services.
  • Any registering or tracking of firearms, firearm accessories, or ammunition.
  • Any registration or tracking of the owners of firearms, firearm accessories, or ammunition.
  • Any act forbidding the possession, ownership, use, or transfer of a firearm, firearm accessory, or ammunition by law-abiding citizens.
  • Any act ordering the confiscation of firearms, firearm accessories, or ammunition from law-abiding citizens.

The proposed law defines a “law-abiding citizen” as “a person who is not otherwise precluded under state law from possessing a firearm.”

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Backlash against weapons ban grows
Jersey County sheriff latest to balk at enforcement

JERSEYVILLE – Jersey County has joined a list of about 80 Illinois counties where sheriff’s and other law enforcement officials have said they will not enforce provisions of the state’s new weapons ban.

On Thursday afternoon newly-elected Jersey County Sheriff Nicholas Manns posted a letter on the department’s Facebook page detailing why he and Jersey County State’s Attorney Ben Goetten will not be participating in the enforcement of HB 5471.

The law bans the sale and possession of “assault weapons” and accessories such as large-capacity magazines, as well as .50 caliber rifles and ammunition. The banned weapons include some specifically names, and others by technical definitions.

However, it grandfathers in weapons that are registered with the Illinois State Police.

Mann said he would be using “lawful discretion” in enforcing the new law.

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Murphy Introduces Bill to Protect 2nd Amendment Rights for Military Families

January 13, 2023

Press Release

Washington, D.C. – Today, Rep. Greg Murphy, M.D. (NC-03) introduced legislation to protect military families’ constitutional rights. The Protect Our Military Families’ 2nd Amendment Rights Act (H.R. 341) guarantees Second Amendment rights to the spouse of a service member. This is the first piece of legislation introduced by Rep. Murphy in the 118th Congress.

“When I was elected to Congress, I made a promise to protect my constituents’ constitutional rights and support our service members and their families. This legislation does both,” said Rep. Murphy. “Far too often, military families are forgotten when Congress addresses issues that impact our warfighters. The Protect Our Military Families’ 2nd Amendment Rights Act goes a long way in ensuring the spouses of our service members are afforded the same constitutional rights as those in uniform. I am proud to always support our outstanding military families and am hopeful this essential piece of legislation will finally see the light of day in a Republican majority.”

Summary of H.R. 341

Under current law, active-duty service members of the United States Armed Forces may purchase firearms at their assigned duty station with proper documentation. However, their spouses are not granted this same constitutional right.

This bill would amend chapter 44 of title 18, United States Code, to provide that a member of the Armed Forces and the spouse of that member shall have the same rights regarding the receipt of firearms at the location of any duty station of the member.

The Protect Our Military Families’ 2nd Amendment Rights Act was previously introduced in the 117th Congress by Congressman Murphy.

This bill is cosponsored by Reps. Dan Crenshaw, Mike Kelly, Byron Donalds, John Rutherford, Rick Crawford, Michael Cloud, Elise Stefanik, Paul Gosar, Dusty Johnson, Ashley Hinson, Scott Franklin, and Randy Weber.

Gun-rights group to appeal federal judge’s ruling upholding RI’s 10-round magazine limit

PROVIDENCE — A group of gun-rights advocates has filed notice they will appeal a federal judge’s decision here upholding Rhode Island’s new ban on gun magazines holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

Michael A. Kelly, a lawyer representing the group, told The Journal on Friday that they hope to argue before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit that a so-called high-capacity gun magazine is part of a firearm and therefore can’t be regulated as the law does.

Last month, U.S. District Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. refused to grant a request by a Chepachet gun store and several Rhode Island gun owners for a preliminary injunction blocking the law, which makes possession of gun magazines that hold more than 10 rounds a felony.

McConnell found that the plaintiffs, Big Bear Hunting and Fishing Supply, along with three Rhode Island residents — Mary Brimer, James Grundy and Jonathan Hirons — and a Newport homeowner who lives in Florida, Jeffrey Goyette, had not shown that they would suffer irreparable harm if the law were allowed to take effect, and furthermore, that allowing its enforcement was in the public’s interest.

The Second Amendment protects the right of people to “keep and bear arms,” McConnell acknowledged. But the plaintiffs, he said, had not demonstrated that the magazines represented “arms” as described in the Second Amendment. They hadn’t presented credible evidence establishing such a magazine as a weapon of self-defense.

He called the ban “a small but measured attempt to mitigate the potential loss of life by regulating an instrument associated with mass slaughter.”

The group of gun owners filed their notice of appeal Friday in U.S. District Court.

Kelly said he plans to hire as an appellate lawyer Paul Clement, the former U.S. solicitor general. Clement successfully argued for gun-rights advocates in a case prompting the U.S. Supreme Court last year to strike down a New York handgun-licensing law that required those who want to carry a handgun in public to show a special need to defend themselves.

Delaware faces lawsuit over large capacity magazine ban

(The Center Square) — Delaware is facing a legal challenge over its ban on large capacity magazines from a group which claims it violates the constitutional right to bear arms.

A lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court by the Second Amendment Foundation on behalf of two gun owners, alleges the state’s new gun restrictions violate the Second and Fourteenth Amendments by preventing them from “exercising their fundamental right to keep and bear arms.

The lawsuit asks a federal judge to grant preliminary and permanent injunctions preventing the state from enforcing the restrictions on large capacity magazines.

“Delaware arbitrarily labels standard capacity magazines capable of holding more than 17 rounds as “large capacity magazines” and bans them despite the fact that they, along with the firearms with which they are compatible, are in common use for lawful purposes,” lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote in a 25 page complaint. “There is no historical tradition of this sort of firearm regulation in the United States.”

Last June, Gov. John Carney signed a package of gun control measures that included a ban on the sale of assault-style weapons, an increase in the age to purchase most firearms from 18 to 21, strengthened background checks and limits on large capacity magazines. It also banned the use of devices that convert handguns into fully automatic weapons.

The proposals were pushed through the Democratic-controlled General Assembly in the wake of several mass shootings, including the massacre of 21 at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

“We have an obligation to do everything we can to prevent tragedies like we’ve seen around the country from happening here in Delaware,” Carney said in a statement at the time.

But Alan M. Gottlieb, the foundation’s executive vice president, said the large capacity magazine ban “literally criminalizes one of the most common and important means by which Delaware citizens can exercise their right of self-defense.” He said the restrictions “make self-defense a potential criminal act, and that must not be allowed to stand.”

The group cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the N.Y. State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen case, which struck down a New York law requiring applicants to show “proper cause” to obtain a permit to carry a firearm. The high court’s conservative majority affirmed the constitutional right to carry firearms in public places for self-defense.

Adam Kraut, the foundation’s executive director, said reduced police manpower in many communities means “there is no guarantee that emergency calls to law enforcement will bring anything resembling a swift response.”

“In the meantime, citizens must be able to rely on their fundamental rights, including the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense, and those rights must be protected,” he said.

Well, they better

Second Amendment Groups Expect New House Majority to Stand and Fight For Gun Owners
Pro-gun advocates say Congress must defend Constitution

Newly elected House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) tried to make hay with Republicans by starting the 118th Congress with a move to defund 87,000 new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agents, but Second Amendment groups see the new Congress as a mixed blessing at best.

While McCarthy was touting efforts to rein in the IRS, Gun Owners of America (GOA) decried what it called a misguided effort to address illegal immigration and placate gun control proponents.

This does not align with the pro-gun agenda GOA and the National Rifle Association (NRA) hope will be pushed by the House majority.

According to a statement on the GOA website, a proposed law requiring the FBI to report anyone illegally in the country—based on information found in firearms purchase background checks—to Immigration and Customs Enforcement is “not a pro-gun bill.”

“This is why gun owners can’t blindly trust Congress to fight for our Second Amendment rights. We just ended Pelosi’s majority, but the new majority wants to use your gun rights as a bargaining chip in the border crisis,” the statement reads.

The GOA states that the National Instant Criminal Background System (NICS) is unreliable. It has prevented law-abiding citizens from making a legal gun purchase because an unqualified buyer shared the same last name, the GOA claimed.

The Act was initially introduced during the last session and is expected to be brought up again. However, one bill that has been reintroduced is getting a much warmer reception.

U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) sponsored HR 38, the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act (CCRA). The bill has 118 original cosponsors.

It would require a concealed firearm carry license from one state to be recognized in any other state as long as the license holder obeys the laws of that state. It also allows residents of constitutional carry states that don’t require a state-issued concealed carry license to carry a gun in other states as long as they obey those states’ laws.

Hudson first introduced CCRA in 2017. At that time, the bill passed the House on a vote of 231-198 but was not taken up by the Senate.

In a statement on his website, Hudson said constitutional rights should be recognized regardless of geography.

“HR 38 guarantees the Second Amendment does not disappear when crossing an invisible state line,” Hudson wrote in his online statement.

Representatives of pro-Second Amendment groups lauded the bill and called on other members of Congress to support it.

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The 3rd Circuit Considers Whether Nonviolent Crimes Justify the Loss of Second Amendment Rights
Because of a misdemeanor welfare fraud conviction, Bryan Range is no longer allowed to own guns.

Back in 1995, Bryan Range pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining $2,458 in food stamps by misrepresenting his income. He returned the money, paid a $100 fine and $288 in court costs, and served three years of probation.

Although Range did not realize it, that Pennsylvania misdemeanor conviction also came with a lifelong penalty: He lost his constitutional right to keep and bear arms. His case, which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit will hear next month, poses the question of whether that policy, which prohibits gun ownership by millions of Americans with no history of violence, violates the Second Amendment.

Federal law generally makes it a felony to purchase or possess a gun if you have been convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year of incarceration. When a state classifies a crime as a misdemeanor, that disqualification applies if the maximum penalty exceeds two years.

Range’s crime was punishable by up to five years in prison, which meant he was no longer allowed to buy or own a firearm. When he tried to buy a deer-hunting rifle in 1998, he failed the background check.

Range figured that must have been a mistake. His wife bought him a rifle, then bought him another after the first one was destroyed in a house fire. Range later tried again to buy a gun but was again turned away, which prompted him to take a closer look at the federal prohibition, which is commonly described as applying to “felons.”

After discovering that he was a “prohibited person” even though he had not been convicted of a felony, Range sold his hunting rifle to a gun dealer. But for that law, he says, he would have kept the rifle and might also have bought a shotgun for home defense.

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The Bruen decision’s ‘Text-History-Tradition’ mandate  will go down as ‘the’ way we get 18 USC §922 (o)  – the ‘Hughes amendment’ ban on new manufacture of automatic firearms that can be possessed by the private citizenry ruled unconstitutional.

Wyoming Man Sues For Right To Make His Own M16 Machine Gun

A Wapiti man who wants to make a machine gun is suing the U.S. government for denying his application to do so, saying a federal anti-machine gun law violates his Second Amendment right.

Jake Stanley DeWilde filed a federal complaint in the U.S. District Court for Wyoming last week, asking for the court to issue a declaration against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The Argument

DeWilde’s complaint says that on Dec. 8, 2022, he submitted an ATF form asking to make and register an M16 machine gun. But 12 days later, the ATF denied his application, citing federal law that forbids both the transfer and possession of machine guns.

The statute doesn’t apply to U.S. government and military forces or machine guns owned before 1986.

The lawsuit relies on case law from 2008, District of Columbia vs. Heller, and 2022 case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. vs. Bruen.

These cases together indicate that guns cannot be considered “dangerous and unusual,” and therefore legitimately unlawful if the guns are in “common use,” DeWilde says in his complaint.

DeWilde argues that because the M16 is in “common use” by the U.S. military, it should be made legal for the nation’s citizenry. He also argues that his Second Amendment right has been violated.

“Plaintiff desires to own an M16 machine gun for all lawful purposes, including defense of hearth and home and militia functions,” reads the complaint, which then asks the U.S. District Court for Wyoming to proclaim the ATF and the nation’s attorney general in violation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

DeWilde filed the lawsuit on his own behalf without legal counsel.

Increased gun sales for minorities due to rational reasons

Gun sales for minorities in the United States have been surging for quite a while now. While the popular image of gun ownership continues to be older white dudes, the reality is very, very different.

More and more gun owners are women and many of those are black or Hispanic.

So why are some of them buying firearms?

Well, here’s why one of them did, and she’s unlikely to be an exception.

Andréa “Muffin” Hudson is an activist for incarcerated individuals, directs two criminal justice nonprofits, and believes prisons do catastrophic harm. She is also a gun owner.

When Hudson, 47, drives around Durham, her G2C 9 mm pistol sits beside her on the passenger seat. She carries it with her everywhere, wearing it like a “fanny pack.” She leaves her gun behind only when she goes to the Durham County Courthouse to pay cash bonds.

Hudson lives with her son, 18, and daughter, 28. Her round cheeks frame her easygoing smile as words flow out, her deep voice suited to the seriousness of her work.

Each room in Hudson’s house has a gun in it. Even the bathroom.

“So if you’re in the bathroom, and somebody breaks in while you’re in the bathroom, you can protect yourself,” she said, laughing. “You know, I watch a lot of movies.”

…

Donald Trump’s presidency inflamed deep-seated racial animosity, lent new muscle and momentum to white nationalists, and stoked the fears of people like Hudson. She bought her first gun in 2017.

“I got it because Trump won, became president, and people were acting erratic,” said Hudson, who is Black. “I was thinking that folks were going to start doing stuff to harm other people. I was thinking about The Walking Dead and Armageddon coming, and I wanted to give us a fighting chance to survive.”

Now, a lot of people would read that and roll their eyes. They’d argue that white supremacy isn’t nearly the threat the media makes it out to be.

Here’s my take: It doesn’t matter.

If you think there’s a potential threat to you and yours, it behooves you to arm yourself and prepare to defend your life and the lives of your family members. That means buying guns.

Yes, it may not be as big of a threat as it feels, but most of us are unlikely to be the victim of a violent crime, either, yet we still carry a firearm.

However, for those like Hudson who do have these concerns, I’d offer a suggestion. If you feel this way, you should start pushing the lawmakers asking for your support to oppose gun control.

After all, if you’re a minority and you’re worried about racial strife, who do you think is most likely to be targeted by gun control? If this is such a racist nation, why wouldn’t black and Hispanic gun owners be the target of anti-gun efforts?

If racism is such a prevalent concern, then why not work to make it impossible for those racists to disarm you and eradicate your ability to defend yourself?

Arming up in response to your concerns over a threat isn’t just rational, it’s smart. Yet you should also be prepared to dig in and fight to preserve the ability for everyone to do the same thing.

BOLD-FACED LIE: Gun Control Groups Twist Heritage Foundation Data Out of Recognition in Court Documents

A conglomerate of gun control groups has filed a brief in federal court supporting the District of Columbia in a lawsuit challenging the city’s prohibition on civilian possession of magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds.

This was not at all surprising.

What was quite perplexing, however, was the gun control groups’ citation of two of my recent monthly articles for The Daily Signal on defensive gun use. The groups claim the two articles “support” the premise that the District’s ban doesn’t negatively affect law-abiding gun owners, because none of the cases I cited “involved the use of anywhere close to 10 rounds of ammunition.”

Worse, the gun control groups spun this as The Heritage Foundation, among others, having “acknowledged that the ability to fire more than 10 rounds of ammunition without reloading is not necessary for defensive purposes.” (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)

These are incredible claims in the most literal sense: They lack any credibility.

At best, the legal brief’s characterization of my monthly articles on defensive gun use is lazy to the point of recklessness and wrongly attributes to my employer, The Heritage Foundation, a policy position that it doesn’t hold. At worst, this constitutes an intentional effort to manipulate a federal court with a blatantly misleading representation of Heritage’s work on defensive gun use.

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En Banc Fifth Circuit Denies Chevron Deference to ATF in Bump Stock Case

A majority of judges concluded the plain language of the statute does not apply to bump stocks, but they also would have denied Chevron deference had they found the statute ambiguous.
Today the en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms regulation extending the federal prohibition on machineguns to “bump stocks” is unlawful, as Eugene noted in a post below. In Cargill v. Garland, the judges split 13-3 on the merits, and the 13 in the majority divided on the rationale. Eight of the judges concluded the statute is unambiguous. Five additional judges concluded that, insofar as the statute is ambiguous, it should be interpreted not to cover bump stocks under the Rule of Lenity.

One aspect of the opinion, that appears to be supported by half of the judges on the en banc court, is that even were the statute ambiguous, it would not merit Chevron deference because the agency had not relied upon Chevron. Seven additional judges further concluded that ATF should not get Chevron deference because the statute imposes criminal penalties and the ATF reversed its prior interpretation of the statute. (Judge Oldham joined the first part of the court’s Chevron discussion, but not the rest.)

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Ranking Redux

Everytown for Gun Safety is rank. And by that, we mean their state gun control law ranking system is rank(ed at the top of the silliness scale).

Takeaways

Everytown’s state law ranking system:

  • Is arbitrary, lacking any criminological basis.
  • Shows very little gun violence variability between states based on their gun laws.
  • Omits the most violent district, which has stringent gun laws.
  • Includes suicides, which are inappropriate in such an analysis.

Echoing the Brady Campaign

The moribund Brady Campaign (or whatever they are calling themselves this week) used to produce a state gun law scorecard every year. It was, in a word, a gun control wish list and nothing more. We keep their last scorecard criteria to reference their arbitrary scoring system for reference and a few laughs (whichever laws they were promoting that year tended get a higher score).

 

Brady Campaign State Scorecard vs Violent Crime Rates

click for larger, sharable version
 

Everytown Gun Law Ranking and Homicide Rates

click for larger, sharable version

We would dutifully produce a scatter diagram each year showing the utter lack of correlation between the Brady Campaign scorecard and any variety of crime.

The Brady Campaign quit producing their scorecard some time after we demonstrated that the states with “strongest” and most “lax” gun laws had identical rates of violent crime (in this last chart we made, blue California on the left and red Arizona on the right).

With the Brady Campaign largely forgotten, Everytown for Gun Safety picked up the slack and started producing their own “ranking” system

Same game, new player.

Blighted Everytown

The headline element of note is that Everytown’s ranking system doesn’t actually prove their point. Quite the opposite.

Here we took their ranking and graphed it against both gun homicides and all modes of homicides. Though the slope of the line does rise as Everytown’s arbitrary rankings drop (left-to-right, “strongest” to most “lax”) the rise is minuscule.

More importantly, the vertical scattering of points shows high volatility all the way from California to Mississippi. For the statistics junkies, that’s an R2 of 0.02 for gun homicides, which basically means no correlation between Everytown’s gun law rankings and actual gun violence.

Let’s list some of the “research” sins Everytown committed:

  • They omitted Washington, DC, which year in and year out is the murder capital as well as of the nation. The District also has stringent gun control laws, so this omission is blatant data rigging.
  • In their analysis, Everytown included suicides. We have shown, using a more appropriate international scale, that there is no correlation between gun availability and suicide rates. This is because the probability of someone wanting to commit suicide is based instead on external factors and cultural attitudes about suicide.

Let’s score their scorecard:

  • No criminology basis.
  • Excludes important datapoint.
  • Includes inappropriate data.
  • Composed via an arbitrary wish list.

In short, meaningless equine effluvium.

Everytown Dumbs Things Down

We expect advocacy groups (Everytown, NRA… doesn’t matter) to promote their causes. But to present the public with wantonly dubious and disastrously constructed “research” only helps to destroy their own brand and weaken their mission.

 

 

New York AG’s Emergency SCOTUS Bid to Preserve Concealed Carry Law Could Mark Showdown Between Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh

New York State Attorney General Letitia James (D) asked the Supreme Court Tuesday to keep its new Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA) in effect while a lawsuit works its way through the courts. The emergency filing marks the justices’ first chance to decide a major Second Amendment dispute since it ruled last summer in New York State Rifle v. Bruen.

The 2022 statute was the result of the state legislature’s emergency session which immediately followed the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bruen. The case had been a successful challenge to New York’s century-old handgun licensing regime. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the Court’s opinion that the statute was an unconstitutional violation of the Second Amendment that unduly interfered with New Yorkers’ “special need for self-defense.”

Thomas also noted in his opinion that gun laws must be “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

New York’s legislative response to the Bruen ruling made it a felony to possess a gun in “sensitive areas” — such as museums, stadiums, public transit systems, parks, Times Square and houses of worship — as well as “restricted areas,” such as private property. The CCIA also added training requirements for concealed-carry permits, as well as a mandated written exam, in-person screening, and a review of social media accounts to ensure a licensee’s “good moral character” before licensing

After it was passed, the CCIA came under immediate attack by gun activists in multiple lawsuits.

In one such case, U.S. District Judge Glenn T. Suddaby, a George W. Bush appointee, temporarily blocked the “sensitive places” and “good moral character” portions of the law on the grounds that analogous regulations did not exist in the 18th and 19th century. James successfully appealed that ruling.

A three-judge panel of U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit next ruled unanimously to stay Suddaby’s order pending the outcome of New York’s appeal and ordered expedited consideration of the case with a Jan. 9, 2023, deadline for briefs.

The panel, which consisted of Circuit Judges Robert D. Sack, a Bill Clinton appointee; Richard C. Wesley, a George W. Bush appointee; and Joseph F. Bianco, a Donald Trump appointee, is the same trio that stayed another district court order in a separate challenge to the CCIA in December.

The gun owners responded with an emergency petition to the Supreme Court on Dec. 21, 2022, in which they asked the justices to keep the district court ruling in effect while the underlying challenge to the CCIA works its way through the appeal.

In a 43-page responsive brief, James urges the justices to refrain from taking the “extraordinary step” of vacating a circuit court order. In particular, James pointed to the timing of the question before the high court.

“This Court ordinarily awaits percolation of legal issues in the lower courts before granting review and would benefit from such percolation here,” the AG’s brief states.

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